Teens and Distracted Driving

75% of all American teens ages 12-17 own a cell phone, and 66% use their phones to send or receive text messages.

Older teens are more likely than younger teens to have cell phones and use text messaging; 82% of teens ages 16-17 have a cell phone and 76% of that cohort are cell texters.

One in three (34%) texting teens ages 16-17 say they have texted while driving. That translates into 26% of all American teens ages 16-17.

Half (52%) of cell-owning teens ages 16-17 say they have talked on a cell phone while driving. That translates into 43% of all American teens ages 16-17.

48% of all teens ages 12-17 say they have been in a car when the driver was texting.

40% say they have been in a car when the driver used a cell phone in a way that put themselves or others in danger.

Introduction

As early as 2006, and well before texting had become mainstream in the U.S., the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reported that more than a quarter of adult cell phone owners felt their cell phone had at some point compromised their driving ability. In the survey, 28% admitted they sometimes did not drive as safely as they should while using their mobile devices.1

Over time, cell phones have become increasingly important fixtures in Americans’ lives and public concern over their use while driving has grown.2 At the time of the 2006 survey, just 35% of adult cell phone owners said they used the text messaging feature on their phones. By April 2009, the use of text messaging by cell phone owners had nearly doubled to 65%.3

Several states including California, Connecticut and Oregon have already passed laws to ban all texting or talking with a handheld phone while driving, and the Senate is now considering a bill that would provide federal funding to states that enact similar laws.4 In September 2009 U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood convened policy makers, safety advocates, law enforcement representatives and academics to address the risk of text-messaging and other “distracted driving” behavior. At the conclusion of the summit, Secretary LaHood announced an executive order from President Obama that forbids federal workers from texting while driving government vehicles or their own vehicles while on the job.5

According to the latest research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2008 alone, there were 5,870 fatalities and an estimated 515,000 people were injured in police-reported crashes in which at least one form of driver distraction was reported. Distractions among young drivers are of particular concern, as the highest incidence of distracted driving occurs in the under-20 age group.6

New research released in July 2009 by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) examines a variety of tasks that draw drivers’ eyes away from the roadway and suggests that text messaging on a cell phone is associated with the highest risk among all cell phone-related tasks observed among drivers.7 The VTTI has also noted that teen drivers are generally at a much higher crash risk when compared to other drivers, but there is a gap in understanding to what extent specific behaviors and relative lack of driving experience may contribute to this elevated risk. An 18-month study of newly-licensed teen drivers is currently underway to further examine these factors.8

Research conducted at the University of Utah’s Applied Cognition Laboratory over the past decade further problematizes cell phone use in the car and suggests that talking on a cell phone while driving impairs driving ability in ways that conversing with a person in the car does not.9 For more information on the body of research around distracted driving, please see the Resources section at the end of this report.

Debra Ascone, Tonja Lindsey, and Cherian Varghese, “An Examination of Driver Distraction as Recorded in NHTSA Databases,” Data Reporting and Information Division, National Center for Statistics and Analysis, NHTSA, September 2009. Available at: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/↩

See Strayer, D.L. and Johnston, W.A., (2001), Strayer, D.L. Drews, F.A., and Crouch, D.J. (2003) and Drews, F.A., Pasupathi, M. and Strayer, D.L. (2008) The findings from these studies assert that talking on a cell phone while driving results in “inattention blindness,” slower reaction times and other impairments of driving skills that are similar to driving while intoxicated. For these papers and others, see http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/↩

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts.